Tag Archives: FDR Second Bill of Rights

I always feel a bit like Scrooge when pointing out Equality for All enforced by government coercion is not in fact a Lovely Idea. But it’s too easy to malign someone who says “Not so fast” as having their nest egg and wanting to lock others out. But that is actually not how commerce and markets have ever worked in history. Which remains a darn useful guide to how things will likely work in the future. So before I explain how CCSSI turns out to be a huge con to change the nature of the US Constitution away from its historic role, let me explain for a minute what we are losing. Let me point out basically why Prosperity Generation Seed Corn like diversified expert knowledge and incentives should always be protected. While it still exists.

I have also noticed that in all the scheming I have been describing where education is an essential part of the No Growth, Post-GDP Future, when education is standing alone no one is being honest with the students and taxpayers on what’s really in store for the future. That the claims of Economic Development around education globally are really just a means to steer more money into that compliant sector for Social Control over the masses. As the always graphic Europeans described it, to obtain “a deep, structural shift in the basic premises of thoughts, feelings and actions.”

So before the bolts of the invisible serfs collars to hobble minds, manipulate hearts, and propel future individual actions have been welded shut, let me remind everyone one more time that historically personal economic freedom predicts a country’s prosperity “better than its mineral wealth, education system or infrastructure do.” That an all-powerful state means economic stagnation at best unless you are part of the politically connected few.

Now that I have sounded that warning one more time hoping to save our Prosperity Seed Corn from Official Arson, it turns out that CCSSI is part of a ploy to create a national equal citizenship guarantee. This highly creative theory of “social citizenship” has been created by controversial former Berkeley Law Professor, Goodwin Liu. You may recognize him from his failed nomination to the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals or his subsequent installation on California’s Supreme Court. Where he has apparently been trying to show he would not be a radical jurist after all. Anyone believing that has not read his “Education, Equality, and National Citizenship” Manifesto from the Yale Law Journal. No, not when he was an impetuous law student. Published in 2006. Part of his adult philosophy of how to revamp the nature of the US Constitution through a highly imaginative reconstruction of the citizenship language of the 14th Amendment.

Liu asserts that the term “citizenship” should now be interpreted to have “social and economic dimensions” instead of just its civil and political meanings. To be a font of substantive guarantees to “secure full and equal citizenship.” Now if this is starting to sound a bit like an insistence on the Scandinavian welfare state as enshrined in the US Constitution when we were not looking, Liu does make quite the use of qualifying language. Well, kind of. See what you think.

This guarantee is not to be “a rigid requirement of national levelling” and “economic inequality is not inherently at odds with equal citizenship.” The “account of citizenship” offered by Liu “does not squarely challenge the competitive norms of the marketplace and its competitive hierarchies.” Liu just wants to create a principle of “bounded inequality” that looks at what others have so social stratification will cease to be a problem. Right.

So basically creative Liu wants either SCOTUS or Congress to assume that the citizenship language means we are all members of a national community called the United States of America and that Membership has its privileges and duties that do not include an American Express card. Because you would have to pay that bill each month. No membership in the US community means everyone has positive rights to certain forms of government assistance to “secure full and equal national citizenship.” Basically social citizenship turns into a claim encompassing “the whole range from the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilised being according to the standards prevailing in the society.”

“enlisting non-governmental organizations to develop national education standards and by incentivizing states to adopt them voluntarily.”

There could not be a more succinct description of CCSSI, the Common Core State Standards Initiative, than that. Which would also explain why the implementation of CCSSI I have chronicled looks nothing like the rhetoric. And why lawyers rightfully concerned with violations of the 10th Amendment or federal statutes are missing the true story. A sought profound rewriting of the 14th Amendment to turn the nature of the US Constitution upside-down. Starting with the need for national education standards. But why that exactly?

Beyond the levelling function we have chronicled, I think the answer lies in the odd definitions of College and Career Ready Standards we have noted along with the Positive School Climate mandate I have described. Plus what we talked about in the last post. There is a desire to create a view of national citizenship not as the source of evenhanded protection against an overbearing state but as the generator of citizenship obligations and duties and responsibilities. All of these words get used over and over again in reference to this new view of education for citizenship. There is to no longer be a right to be left alone. This is not only true in US but in the descriptions from all over the world. Education is being seen as the means for creating the Values and Attitudes, the real common core, that recognizes a personal and collective responsibility towards solidarity with others to achieve social justice, understanding and cooperation amongst peoples.”

And I am retorting that this so-called “model of partnership” created via education with government employees acting as enforcers is unlikely to work out as envisioned. And I think all of this rewriting of the 14th Amendment and UNESCO Education for All and Systems Thinking and Transformational OBE and Career Pathways and OECD Competences are all examples of a return to the Predator State. With a global Nomenklatura this time. No more genuine personal autonomy or economic freedom. By the time anyone could have figured this all out it would have been too late. I think no one intended for a history geek who once aced Con Law to be tracking education policy by its economic function and political results.

And because perceptions can trump reality, if you teach students this altered definition of Citizenship and obligation for the Common Good and demerits for acts of individuality, and then gather data to enforce this Image of the Perfect Collectivist Citizen Drone for the 21st Century, you can create her. Regardless of the language and historical intent of the Constitution. I have seen the College Board’s revisions of their AP history courses. No one is likely to be learning the truth about the Constitution in an American classroom for very much longer.

History shows that self-interest always exists and only free markets channel it in beneficial ways. A government employee with the ability to enforce an education edict that insists that “community means working collectively and collaboratively with others toward a shared vision” still has a self-interest they will try to maximize. That will likely involve pushing this sought mandate to get a raise or promotion no matter how bad the results for students and taxpayers.

Everything that has been a barrier in the past to the Overbearing State is being dismantled. At the exact same time the countries that have social democracy/welfare state for all have found it to be unsustainable. All those realities are being ignored though by politicians and Connected Businesses wanting to preserve power and economically unsophisticated voters and students wanting free stuff at someone else’s expense.

I am not going to tell you we need to stop this before it goes airborne. That really happened in the 90s as Outcomes Based Education. I am just hoping to create enough alarm before we get to the May Not Turn Around part of the Trip.

I mean did anyone even pack a life raft for when we go down? I can hear that left engine sputtering badly and we cannot all fly on only one engine.